Entering the field season working alongside the U.S. forest service began with memorizing many new acronyms, names, acronyms, protocols, and acronyms. My co-intern turned bestie, Cassidie and I were fortunate regarding timing as we could attend the scheduled forest wide orientation providing us a brief look into the many departments. Is it just me or did you all know that there’s a job titled ‘Silviculturist’ in Timber that manages/designs the forest and climbs trees for a living, or that the ‘Hot Shots’ from Fire are essentially the marines of the forest service? Put simply, I’ve learned a lot in my short time here and have quickly adjusted as everyone from Uinta-Wasatch-Cache (UWC) has welcomed us with support and smiles all while purveying the importance of safety in these positions.

One of the aspects I love about this forest is that they understand the value of people and that they work best when placed in a work environment they can thrive in, so I wanted to be sure to recognize the people imperative in such roles through these blog posts. Sierra, our boss and mentor goes above and beyond for us despite her busy schedule. We quickly realized that she’s an astute leader who see’s the larger picture and provides us with many opportunities involving developing new skills, networking, overall growth within the career path and so much more. She’s more than prepared us with the tools we need to succeed in this position and trusts us to get the seed collection job done. For instance, one of the first tasks she assigned us involved creating a pamphlet for our target species which has proven to be extremely helpful in:

1.) Becoming familiar with the species

2.) Quick identification out in the field

3.) Sharing our species list with others to let us know if they see them

We look forward to proving her right.

Our first field day involved working with a geologist who piloted the drone pictured above to survey populations of the endemic to Logan Canyon, therefore found nowhere else in the world, Primula maguirei aka Maguire Primrose. This was the first time drones had been used for botany in this forest and we’re thrilled for it’s potential use in the field since this primrose grows on cliff-sides that are hazardous for field techs to get to. Attempts to get closer are not only dangerous, but also disrupt the habitat they grow in. Previously, field techs would use binoculars to count populations, understandably creating a margin of human error. Using drones could remove that margin of error through imagery and spectral signatures, accurately identifying and counting populations while potentially including areas that have been out of reach.

Being involved in this project came with an important reminder that unlike national parks that are meant to be preserved, national forests get used. This key factor is why it’s important to get this work done, particularly for this species. Utahn’s love their outdoor activities. People swarm from all over to join them in the great outdoors Utah has to offer, myself included. One of the reasons this site was chosen for drone surveying was because it had a healthy sized population, but also because people like to rock climb here. Continuous recreational use of this cliff-side would cause detrimental effects to the habitat thus the population.

Adventuring into the forest with the botany technicians is when I began to feel like I was making a true contribution. We helped them complete element occurrences (EO’s) which involve monitoring an area with a previously recorded siting of a threatened, endangered, or sensitive (TES) species. It’s important for botany tech’s to revisit said sites, especially if it falls within Fuels sites, Timber sale sites, or construction geographic information systems (GIS) polygons. The idea is to prevent a potential rare population from being obliterated. Fortunately for us, almost every site revisited contained the rare species we searched for! Here are a few that we were lucky enough to get pictures of.

Outings with the field technicians allowed us to explore different areas of the forest and supplied us ample opportunity for seed collection scouting. The species list given seemed extensive and just a tad bit overwhelming, especially with the idea that we’d need 10-20 different populations from each of them, but we quickly overcame that as we saw many potential populations to collect from. Of course this was only after becoming familiar enough with them to confidently spot the target species from our truck. We were always allowed to ask to stop for species verification checks, which is why it could be time consuming to carpool/hike with botanists…we had many “squirrel!” moments. When Sierra determined we could start going out on our own, we began using tablets to collect data and record information for those target populations.

So far we’ve completed collections of Lomatium dissectum, Lomatium grayi, and Chaenactis douglasii. To keep our sanity we’ve also created a seemingly never ending spreadsheet of areas and populations we need to revisit once seeds have matured. In the meantime it’s been touch and go for scouting populations forest wide. We hope to collect from every population and species on our list, a daunting task to say the least since we know we’ll have moments where everything will seem to be ready for harvest all at the same time. Mother Nature waits for no one. Through this internship I’ve been able to explore the gorgeous canyons and mountains the UWC forest has to offer. I’ve even come across unusual orchids that I didn’t know existed, let alone grew here. Admittedly, it’s been difficult to avoid dwelling on how quickly our time’s been flying by, but I look forward to the many goals we aim to achieve, challenges, and adventures to come!

My time as a CLM intern started around two months ago when my car and I arrived in North Fork, California. My first friends in this novel town were two tree frogs who fancied a sleepover the night of my arrival. We discussed first day of work anxiety and local recommendations, it was crazy.

I would like to take the time to update the frogs I’ve evicted on my internship thus far.

Dear frogs,

Two months ago, I kicked you out of my house. Now, I would consider it a home. I have quickly fallen in love with the plants and people I have meet in the Sierra. You might know some of them. From the giant sequoias to the penny-sized monkeyflowers, I don’t think I will ever get bored. That reminds me, have you ever tried put a Diplacus bicolor on your head? I think it would make a great hat for you both. Also, it comes in two color options, pink and yellow!

As far as work goes, I have had the opportunity to be involved in many trainings covering various topics including seed collection, wilderness first aid, and chainsaw training. Thanks to these trainings, I feel more comfortable and confident in the field. Currently, our main projects have been collecting native grass seed, vouchering higher elevation species for future seed collections, rare plant monitoring, assessing the proper functioning condition (PFC) of meadows, and invasive species removal. I hope y’all are still following me here, because I want your input on the PFC of a couple of meadows. I have a feeling you might know a frog or two living there. To conduct PFC assessments, we worked with a hydrologist, herpetologist, and range specialist to understand different factors of the meadow’s functioning. The botany team was focused on getting a floristic inventory of the species present along with their abundances. Besides the fact they house too many sedges to comprehend, I have a newfound appreciation for these diverse systems.

In addition to the wetter environments in the Sierra, we have ventured into the far drier, granitic ecosystems. Granite formations and domes cover the forest, adding dimension between the forested mountains. I’ve enjoyed seeing the relationship between the area’s unique geology and flora. Endemic and rare plants love to squeeze between granite slabs. However, I advise you not to go, it is too hot for a mere amphibian.

I have become quite passionate about seed collecting. From scouting for populations, to understanding their phenology, I am obsessed with the whole process. I have a hard time believing that I’m getting paid to participate in a forest-wide quest where I spend time with my favorite plants and people. I bet the thrill of finding a population of a target species viable for seed collecting feels like finally landing on that lily pad which has seemed too far out of reach. And stripping a good helping of grass seed off the stalk feels like catching a juicy fly after a long day.

I am beyond excited to continue my journey as a CLM intern and to experience more lily pad and juicy fly moments. I can’t wait to write again and tell you all about them.

XOXO,

your ex-roommate, Emma

In the last two months, I have thought about phenology and life cycles of plants more than I ever have.
 
Thinking about this has encouraged me to ponder my own life. For the past two decades, I have strictly adhered to a seemingly endless cycle: school, a break from school, back to school, back to a break, back to school… In this process, I faced challenges and I grew, but I remained entrapped in the rhythm. Then, at long last, the cycle was broken on May 18th of this year when I graduated from Louisiana State University.
 
From days in lecture halls and final exams to endless hours in the foothills and on the peaks of grand mountains, from suffocating humidity to bone dry heat, and from living in a metropolitan area to one with a population of just about 3,000—I had stepped into a whole new world.
 
Each day that I go to the field, especially in the burn scars that are too abundant around me, I see this reflected in the surrounding plant communities. Environmental events, such as fires, strip much of an area, leaving surviving rhizomes, seeds, and plants in a completely unfamiliar place. Still, many plants persist and reemerge, effectively encouraging the propagation of the traits most suited to survival.
 
One plant, in particular, comes to mind. This is Carpentaria californica, a shrub endemic to a select few sites in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada—all in the Sierra National Forest. It thrives in the aftermath of fire, primarily reproducing from stump sprouts after burning. The plant can grow each year, abiding by these cycles, but a radical environmental change is necessary for its significant growth. I can empathize with C. californica as I navigate a completely novel environment.

 
The beginning of my season here marked my first time in the Sierra Nevada, my first time working in a National Forest, and my first time working a real field botany job. I was forced to become familiar with the flora of the Sierra quickly, and I just as rapidly fell in love with it.

That which I have learned about seeds and seed collecting is especially important to me. Seed collecting has proven to be incredibly rewarding; I am overjoyed that my work will one day contribute to the revegetation of this place that I have come to adore. Each day, I work with unbelievable views of the Sierra Nevada, familiarizing myself with a new population of plants that plays the most vital part in this process. Each of these populations are so unique, with different abundances, densities, and environments, not to mention the fascinatingly divergent anatomies of their plants and seeds. I never know quite what to expect when I set out to assess or collect from a population, and each requires much thought and discussion.
 
Recently, my co-intern, Emma, and I collected from large populations of the native grasses Elymus glaucus and Bromus sitchensis variety carinatus. The next week, we approached a new population of these plants, separated by only a couple of miles, to find radically different population specifications. Even more distinct was the population of Lupinus microcarpus variety densiflorus that we had collected a couple weeks prior. The environments and seeds could not be any more dissimilar to the ones that we would discover when navigating those grasses.
 

With each seed I collect, I think about their capacity to repopulate barren environments, and I revisit my thoughts of Carpentaria californica. Just as this plant thrives with a big change in a new environment, so do I. Being in a new place doing new things has taught me so, so much. I have grown as a person and as a botanist, and I can’t wait to keep on learning in this incredible place.

Hugs from SNF!

Elanor 🙂

The primary goal I came into this internship with was to delve deeper into the role that native seed systems are playing within the greater context of restoration efforts both in Alaska and in the greater US.  Investigating various types and methods of restoration has been of central focus of my work and studies for a while now.   Over the past couple years I’ve been curious about what native seeds systems look like on the ground, how people are implementing them, and how they are building them out.  Personally, I can’t help but think at the systems level; a wide angled, zoomed out view of the integrated whole.  Therefore, when I’m learning small details I tend to draw them to the larger context to make sense of them within the greater whole.  Therefore, within the subject of native seed systems, I’m constantly thinking about how they play into greater restoration projects and methods, and how they fit within some of the most pressing global issues of our time like climate change, widespread extinction rates, and deeply embedded social injustices. 

I was able to steep within these questions and contexts during the first couple of weeks of my internship.  My position is based in the Chugach National Forest in Moose Pass, AK, and I work out of the Kenai Lake Work Center.  The setting is quite stunning: old rugged snow capped mountains that fall into the sea.  The interior of the Kenai Peninsula is dappled with many alpine lakes, most of aqua hue.  Some of the rivers run the same color.  I arrived in time to see the snow still reigning in the alpine areas (over 800 inches fell here last winter) and exactly as the red salmon began to run.  As I write now, two weeks later, it is the day after the summer solstice and everything has awakened and is thirsting for life.  Since the summer seasonal window is so much shorter here than the lower 48, the summers really come in a burst of life that makes you come fully and wildly alive too.  I feel like a child again, refusing to sleep because I don’t want to miss a thing.

The history of this place, and context of the restoration project where our seed collecting efforts are being funneled, are wrapped within the raw elements that initially formed this unique environment and make this area so awe-inspiring.  65 million years ago when the Kenai Mountains were formed, gold formed load deposits within the rocks during its crystallization.  Due to the weathering and then the glacial formation about 2 million years ago, the gold was further dispersed.  When the glaciers melted, starting about 12,000 years ago and continues to accelerate today, streams especially reworked and uncovered the dispersed placer gold, or gold that has been separated from sand or gravel due to erosion and weathering.  The seemingly disconnected presence of gold on the Kenai Peninsula is the underlying impetus for our seed gathering this season.  This is because our seed collection is for a riparian restoration project on US Forest Service land that is within an active mining claim.

The site of the mining and restoration project is on Resurrection Creek on the Northern coast of the Kenai Peninsula, just outside of a small town called Hope, AK.  This river runs into the sea at the Turnagain Arm and is critical spawning and rearing habitat for a keystone species of this region: salmon.  Chinook, coho, chum, and pink all used to run this river.  But during the gold rush of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, miners significantly altered stream channels and wetlands of the creek to the extent that it decimated salmon habitat and populations there.  In the early 2000’s, the first USFS restoration project on this mining claim, referred to as “Phase I” took place.  This portion of the project restored a 1.5 mile stretch of the creek to mimic a more natural flow by digging new stream channels which meander, creating pools and side channels, as well as ponds and wetland areas with the intent to create an environment where salmon can run, rest, and spawn once again.  The results were quite successful and almost immediate.  A year afterward, Chinook salmon numbers increased six-fold, and have only continued to increase. Pink and chum salmon have also returned.  During Phase I of this project, the area was largely allowed to revegetate naturally, alongside some monitoring and minimal necessary treatments towards more aggressive invasive plant species that arose.  Twenty years after the implementation of Phase I, the restoration of the riparian native plant community has been largely successful, alongside the restoration of the salmon.

The project that our seed collection efforts this summer will be contributing to is the second portion of this restoration project along Resurrection Creek, deemed “Phase II.”  This phase is an additional 2.7 miles of stream downstream from Phase I to be restored in a similar manner and for the same purposes.  The only difference this time is that this project must be done by standards set by the Army Corp of Engineers.  Due to these standards, the USFS is required to revegetate the restoration area with a certain percentage of wetlands and needs to achieve 75% vegetative cover in the restoration site within 5 years. Given the barrenness of the site and quality of ground material present there now, this seemed like quite a lofty goal to me.  But with all challenges acknowledged, these are where our efforts come in. 

The first day I went to the site, I couldn’t believe how devoid of life it felt and looked, nor the enormity of the project.  Although the force and beauty of the river were present and its wildly meandering movement had been restored, the barren, compact gravel substrate covering the river’s banks and flood plains following its reconstruction made my stomach churn.  It was a gray moonscape, without a drop of green.  We walked the site and saw where the future river would flow.  Not only were enormous amounts of earth and rocks being moved and molded, but we walked down the restoration site for maybe about a mile and it seemed to stretch on and on.  It was truly incredible the lengths to which this project is going to restore habitat for salmon, as well as other species.   My advisor, Peter, pointed out areas of vegetation downstream filled with native riparian species, like horsetail, that we could salvage out of the future river’s path to be transplanted in areas where they could continue to thrive if the transplanting worked.  The project was exciting, interesting, and complex, but needless to say, it felt quite daunting.  This was our garden, but instead rich topsoil, we had nutrient poor gravel and instead of well versed cultivars, we had particular, finicky, yet resilient wild seeds and transplants.

Later that week, Peter and I took two trips to Anchorage to pick up over 7,000 native plant starts to be planted at the restoration project this summer.  These were grown from the seeds that Chicago Botanic Garden interns had collected the previous season here in the Chugach.  The transplants were grown by the Soil and Water Conservation Districts centralized in Anchorage.  When we arrived to pick up the plants, it was a circus of volunteers carrying large flats of plants you usually don’t see grown as plugs.  The regular gardener might not have been very impressed as many of the plants weren’t as showy as you usually expect to see grown in a cultivated manner.  But to the seasoned eye, this was something extra special.  Native sedges and grasses that are particular and finicky about their growing conditions and habits were big, bushy, and beautiful.  Carex mertensii, carex aquatalis, carex canascens; flats of sedges that you typically only see growing in the wild, had emerged rapidly after being cold stratified and were anxiously waiting to get to their new home.  The managers and volunteers were very excited about the gift that they had grown as well.  I learned that much of it had been trial and error, as so many of these species had no previous protocol on how to be grown from seed.  It was quite the puzzle loading the plants in the trailer and carting them 2 hours southwest to the restoration site.  But almost all of them made the journey, and there was a SCA (Student Conservation Association) crew there ready to plant and water them over the next couple of months as they get established in their new home along the river at the restoration site.

Later that week I helped plant these transplants into a makeshift wetland area.  A few weeks previously, thousands of willow stakes had been planted around the terrestrial perimeter of the future wetland.  These stakes were already beginning to bud.  Below the stakes, where slow moving water met muck, we planted several sedges and a forb including carex mertensii (Merten’s Sedge), carex aquatilis (Water Sedge), and Mimulus guttatus (Monkey Flower). I’ve spent seasons working on farms and planting gardens, but I had never planted in the muck before.  Surprisingly, it was incredibly enjoyable and satisfying.  A feeling of gratification swept over me afterwards when I got to see a previously gray and brown mudscape promisingly carrying dapples of bright green life.

 It was captivating to think about how the species we just planted on the landscape might exist and maybe even thrive and adapt there for potentially hundreds or thousands of years to come.  It felt strange to play such a powerful role in the future of a landscape like that, though.  We were shaping and cultivating the foundation of an ecosystem.  Something about that felt like we were wielding too much power and control.  But simultaneously, the feeling that came after planting those riparian species caught me off-guard.  Whether that was because my actions were truly beneficial to the ecosystem at large or simply because I perceived them to be, I’m not sure.  But it was surprising that such a seemingly small action could have such a palpable and positive impact on my spirit.  Because of the scale and complexity of environmental and social issues we face in the world today, I am deeply critical about the actual and longterm effects that restoration projects have in an area.  But I must admit that I felt cautiously hopeful after the planting…maybe humans can have a truly beneficial impact on their surroundings, I thought.  Maybe this is an example of it.

One thing I can say for sure is that after planting native sedges and grasses in Resurrection Creek, I suddenly felt an incredibly deep connection with, and a building sense of care for the wellbeing of this place and ecosystem.  I felt ready and inspired to begin getting to know these native plants on a more intimate level, and to start gathering their seeds for the future foundation of this ecosystem.